His profile was on the law school’s website. At the top, screen right, was a portrait of Professor Hartnett. I’d seen him in the crowd at Evelyn’s vigil. No one answered the office number listed on the website, but his voice recording referred me to a cell phone number, which I dialed.
“Hartnett here.” He had a big voice, deep and booming. I barely got out who I was and what I was working on when he agreed to meet. “If it’s about Evelyn, I can talk now. Not sure if I’m up for a taped interview. Mind if we do off-camera?”
I sighed. Only in the District would you find a professor well versed enough in TV lingo to jam me up. Fresh video was desperately needed, but I told him we could begin any way he liked, as long as he talked.
————
Bradley Hartnett lived in the Kennedy-Warren, a condominium wedged between Connecticut Avenue and Rock Creek Park and to its south, the National Zoo. It was a beautiful prewar building made of limestone and had eagles carved on its colonnade. The setting sun flashed across the windows, gilding the glass.
Hartnett was waiting by a fountain in the courtyard. He was a large, barrel-chested man, and his thick neck sported a green tie, carelessly knotted. As we shook hands, mine disappeared into his.
“Not sure how you do these kinds of interviews,” he said nervously. Whether his nervousness had to do with Evelyn or the interview remained to be seen. “If we need privacy, we can go up to my apartment. Otherwise, there’s a lounge in the building, members only; no one will see us.”
That gave me pause. “Why would we need privacy? You’re not asking for anonymity, right?” I still needed someone to go on the record, for god’s sake.
“Let’s hit the lounge.”
We went through the glass door and into the lobby, where I found myself gawking like a tourist. The lobby was wonderfully glamorous with its brass zigzag railings and deco lamps brightening the rich green walls. Ornate columns soared to high ceilings cut into geometric grids.
Hartnett led me to a bar that belonged in a black-and-white movie. Club chairs surrounded little tables scattered around the room. There was a shiny black piano that no one was playing, and a mahogany bar where a man in a suit polished glassware. We were the only patrons. Hartnett ordered sparkling water for me, a scotch for himself, and we carried our drinks to a corner. He was clinging to his drink like it was a life raft.
I tried to soothe him with chitchat. “What a lovely place to live, and so close to the zoo. Do you ever hear the animals?”
“In the morning sometimes,” he said. “My wife and I used to get up at dawn and listen for lions.”
“Is she here now? Your wife?”
He looked at me strangely. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Who?”
“The police. They told you about me, right?” He had an ankle over his knee. His wing tip oxford was kicking in agitation. “I’m widowed almost five years now. They should have told you that, too. They made me look like a dirty old cheat, didn’t they?”
“A . . . cheat?” I thought about the intimate way Evelyn had written of him in the journal. Had I stumbled on the guy I’d been looking for? “You had a relationship with Evelyn Carney?”
His chin lowered. He gazed moodily into the glass. “No, we weren’t in a relationship,” he said, and then, choosing his words carefully: “We were . . . friends. She confided in me, shared her worries. Why won’t they believe that?”
“Who?”
“Police detectives.”
————
There are many reasons people talk to a journalist. To help a person find their reason, I’ve played good cop and bad, confessor, psychologist, fellow mourner, and friend. But Bradley Hartnett needed only a willing ear. For him, talk was catharsis, and his words rushed out.
He repeated what he’d told police: he’d never been involved with any student, not even a former student, he swore it. Not that he was any great arbiter of morality, but he took pride in his work. He had always maintained an open-door policy, and while popular with students, he kept firm lines. Besides, those bright young women with their ironed hair and diet-starved bodies held no allure for him. They had no mystery. No depth. They gave voice to every idea, certain theirs were inarguably right. All that youthful sincerity made him feel ancient.
Then one day, Evelyn Carney walked into his lecture hall. She was older than the others, more mature. She always sat in his front row, center seat, all alone, and—it seemed to him—lonely; her serious eyes lingering on him as he lectured. Her loveliness was to him a thing incandescent.
As he wove his story, I wondered if Professor Hartnett was a romantic, and his view of Evelyn was idealized, except for this: I’d seen Evelyn in that cutaway video, and she was incandescent.
During the fall that Evelyn was his student, Brad Hartnett became infatuated beyond reason. His life condensed to Thursday afternoon lectures, those ninety minutes he could gaze on her in his front row. Sometimes she’d cross her legs, and he’d get lost in midsentence, but his discipline held firm. If she approached him, he would treat her no differently. He would speak to her as any other student. Every Thursday before the lecture, he made these promises to himself, but she never approached. He never even heard her voice. He only knew her work, and then the class was over.
Months later, she appeared in his office doorway. “She wanted to know if I remembered her,” he said with a humorless laugh. “There she stood, her small hand gripping her opposing wrist, which I’d later learn she did when she was nervous. She was far from home and knew no one in the city. She needed help with her career, and, I like to think, she also needed a friend. I told her she could drop by my office anytime, and she did, frequently. Those visits became the best part of my day. The more we talked, the more dazzled I was.”
When he went silent, I gazed at him with sympathy. “You grew to care for each other?”
His face flushed. “Not the way I had hoped, but yes.”
“You loved her?”
He winced. “I do.”
The present tense, I noted. “But you never had a sexual relationship?”
“She’s married,” he said quickly. He took a gulp of his drink and balanced the glass on his knee. “Besides, I don’t believe she has ever thought of me in that way.”
“Understood,” I said, and then I asked him to help me understand the timeline. “She began visiting you, when?”
“Last winter. She was in her final year and needed help on the job search. She wanted to prove to her folks back home she could make it on her own merits.”
“They expected a lot?”
“They expected nothing at all, except for her to be pretty and harmless. They thought even less of her ability to have a successful career in the law. Marry the boy next door. Keep a nice home. Join the local country club. I think their disregard hurt her.”
I understood that, too. “She’s a lawyer, that’s who she is. She wanted recognition for being good, right?”
“Yes,” he said, and then in a defensive tone: “I only arranged the interview. She landed the job herself.”
It was Paige Linden he turned to. Paige had been a schoolmate of his wife, Maggie, who’d been quite a bit younger than Hartnett. He’d always admired Paige’s talents as a litigator and her support for other women in the workplace. Paige also knew firsthand the difficulties working in a male-dominated field, so he’d hoped she might look out for Evelyn.
After Evelyn began working at the firm, he’d planned a celebration that never happened. Evelyn was too busy. Her new bosses were demanding, so he gave her the space she’d asked for, even though he missed her.
Then, several weeks ago, she rushed into his office as though there’d been no time apart. By then, the fog of his infatuation had lifted, and he saw her as he’d never been able to: nearly twenty years his junior, so young it broke his heart. Beneath her makeup, her cheeks were blotchy from crying. He begged her to tell him what was wrong.
“What did she say?”
He glanced up as if he’d forgotten I was there. He gave me a troubled look before he said, “What happened Sunday night? Do you know?”
“Investigators say she argued with her husband and left the restaurant alone. She hasn’t been seen since.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what the police say. What really happened?”
I sat back in my chair and watched him. “You don’t believe the police?”
“Take the chief’s press conference on the news yesterday,” he told me, lifting both eyebrows suggestively. “She described Evie as if she were some silly girl who’d wandered aimlessly into the dark. What a ridiculous caricature.”
“How so?”
“Evie’s small and delicately built, and she understands she’s in a city dangerous to women. She’s far too intelligent to have left the restaurant like that, alone.”
This line of reasoning always mystified me. How did people think we lived? Were we supposed to lock ourselves away the moment night fell? Refuse to leave a restaurant without a man to escort us? Besides, a decade of reporting news in the District had taught me a woman’s intelligence—or lack thereof—had nothing to do with becoming a victim, with influencing who was picked out as the lion locked on one antelope while the rest of the herd moved on.
His eyes shifted away from mine. “What about Evie’s phone?” he said. “Have you heard anything?” A range of expressions played across his face—anxiety? Worry? Guilt? “If she had her phone that night? Do you know?”
There it was again, that look—was it guilt? Suddenly everything he told me took on a darker tone. He had said his infatuation for Evelyn Carney was beyond reason. She cared for him, but not the way he wanted. He was in love with her. He couldn’t have her. He gave her space and was not happy about it.
Investigators had questioned him. Why don’t they believe me?
“Where were you the night Evelyn disappeared?” I said.
“Are you asking if—if—I did something to Evie?” he sputtered.
He had thick wrists and hands that were fisted in anger. They were the kind of hands that could crush a small woman. Hell, they could probably crush me.
I kept an eye on his fists. “Could you answer the question, please?”
“On the night Evelyn disappeared, I was at a dinner party,” he said. “The party was at a friend’s weekend house in Annapolis. I drank too much and stayed overnight. But aside from that, use a little logic, would you? I could never hurt Evelyn. It’s Peter Carney I wanted gone.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
OUTSIDE OF HARTNETT’S condominium, the late-afternoon sunlight cast the courtyard fountain in gold. I propped my hip against it and thumbed through the texts that had piled up on my phone. Most were from Ben, starting with a couple of trying to reach you’s and return my call ASAPs and escalating to I need something new or my live shot’s gonna die and where the hell are you, anyway? Chasing you can wear a body out.
Ben was my friend and also my responsibility, but it wouldn’t hurt if he got his own leads every now and again. It really wouldn’t. Instead of complaining, I replied: Got nothing to report yet. Call cops for latest & lead with whatever they say.
There, that ought to buy me some time. The last text was from Isaiah with Ian Chase’s phone number and home address across the river in Arlington, Virginia, as well as the tags for his Mercedes, according to DMV records.
I ask you for the world, I replied to Isaiah, and you give me the moon, too.
————
Rush hour was slow going through Georgetown, and traffic on the Key Bridge was at a standstill. The bridge walkers with their pink cheeks, blowing hair, and flapping coats were making better time than I was. Finally, I was across the river, and a few blocks later, turning into Ian’s neighborhood. It was a quirky mix of 1920s Sears kit houses and contemporary townhouses surrounding a park that overlooked the river. Across the street from the park was Ian’s condo building, an all-glass high-rise, very modern and luxurious, and considering its looks and location, expensive as hell.
I parked where I could keep an eye on the entrance door and the garage, and dialed Ian’s number. When there was no answer, I crossed the street to the condo and buzzed the concierge, watching him through the glass as he picked up the phone. Mr. Chase wasn’t in, he said, and no, I couldn’t wait in the lobby.
I went back to my car and settled in for the stakeout. My notepad was angled against the steering wheel, so I could transcribe the interview with the professor while keeping a lookout for any movement.
Later, my cell phone rang. It was the intern at the receptionist’s desk. She told me the woman claiming to be my mother had called for me again. This time she’d asked for driving directions to the station. She threatened to talk to me one way or another. “Sure you don’t know her?” she said. “Called herself Doris Knightly.”
Christ, I thought. These wacko callers couldn’t even get my mother’s name right. My mother had been Diana, as in Roman goddess, lunar virgin, guardian of wild creatures and protector of young girls, and it was this image I carried of her always. Diana.
“Put me through.” My voice was gruffer than I’d intended. “Go through the switchboard, so it’s the station’s number, not mine, that shows up on the caller ID.”
“Want me to stay on the line?” the intern asked as a woman joined us, and then the intern said, “I have Virginia Knightly on the line returning a call.”
“Is this Ginny?” the woman said.
The back of my neck tingled. No one called me that, not in more years than I could count. I told the intern to hang up. “My name is Virginia,” I said.
“Oh, honey, thank the Lord.” Her voice had that downstate Delaware sound, the country drawl with a mid-Atlantic nasal twist. “These people answering your phone, they’re so rude. They won’t let me talk to you. I’m about a minute from driving down myself, but I don’t care for big cities.”
“No, wait, don’t drive anywhere,” I said. “Tell me what you want.”
“Oh.” She paused. “You sound so . . . maybe a little hard, honey. Not that I’m criticizing. Your daddy says you’re on TV in the nation’s capital”—nation’s capital, she said, as if it were some den of iniquity—“one of them mainstream media always being talked about. But I always say, folks got a reason for being what they are.”
I interrupted. “Who are you?”
“Didn’t your people tell you?”
“You claimed to be my mother. That’s a rotten trick.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t of said it, but that nasty girl had it coming. Acting like I got no right to talk to you. I got plenty of right. I think myself mama to all your daddy’s babies.”
All his babies.
Lovely.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, saying, “So wait, you’re married to my father?”
“He wants to see you, honey.”
The memory struck fast. The beach on a hot summer’s day, the sand scorching my feet, and then, being lifted in powerful arms, the world tilting and righting itself as he set me on his wide shoulders, high, oh so high. I clutched at his mane of hair warmed by the sun, and we frolicked in the waves, the spray of ocean mist cooling my sunburned skin—
The old ache settled in my chest. “Not a good idea,” I said. “It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen the man.” And I stopped. There was really nothing more to say.
“He’s sick.” She gave the name of the hospital he was in, but I didn’t need the address. It was where my mother had died.
“If you came, it’d bring him—it’d be kind, that’s all.” She had a voice that was hard to hang up on, matronly and sweet, full of sad pauses. She did good phone, I’d give her that. “It would mean the world to him, and it’s such a teensy bit of effort, just to come on by and say hello.”
A red hatchback pulled in front of the glass building. It had one of those green-and-red roof domes advertising an Italian restaurant. From its hatch, the driver lifted a tall stack
of pizzas. Doris was saying “think about it honey, but not too long,” and I was nodding “yeah, uh-huh” sort of absently, watching the driver as he struggled with the pizzas.
I said goodbye as politely as I could under the circumstances before I hung up and ran across the street. At the first set of entry doors, the delivery guy was lifting the boxes he’d set on the floor to make his call. The door buzzed loudly, and a latch clicked.
“Here, let me help you,” I said, grabbing the door. I drafted behind him.
Past the now-empty concierge desk, there was an alcove with puffy chairs grouped around heavy wood tables in a decor reminiscent of a high-end hotel. An enormous potted tree with broad leaves shielded the chair farthest from the concierge desk. I chose that chair and pulled out my notebook, pretending to write while watching through the leaves for Ian Chase.
The pizza deliverer nodded on his way out. After that, time passed slowly. The concierge who returned to his perch was a different man from the one I’d spoken with earlier. He glanced my way several times, as if trying to decide whether he knew me or if he should know me, and if not, should he approach? Just as it seemed he might, Ian Chase came through the atrium doors. He walked heavily with slumped shoulders, clutching his arms at the elbows. He appeared to be warding off a chill.
I followed him around the corner to a bank of elevators where he waited. An arrow lit up before the doors opened and he got in. I was conflicted. Should I follow him up or let him go and try to raise him by phone now that I knew he was home? He put his hand on the door, holding it for me, and I got in.
The elevator was made of glass. As it rose, the street lamps flickered through bare trees, and then we were above the rooftops and the trees, and I could see the lights of the city across the river. It was an incredible view, probably a multimillion-dollar view, but Ian Chase had his head down and saw none of it.
The Cutaway Page 8